this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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Reddit’s UK users must now prove they’re 18 to view many types of content (arstechnica.com)
submitted 9 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/43948771

Reddit hires company to verify user age with selfie or photo of government ID.

top 30 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 hours ago

Look at what Reddit is saying. It's absurd:

For UK users under 18, Reddit said it has to restrict sexually explicit content; content that promotes suicide, deliberate self-injury, and eating disorders; content that incites abuse or hatred against people based upon protected characteristics; bullying content; content that promotes violence or "depicts real or realistic serious violence against a person, an animal, or a fictional creature"; content that promotes challenges or stunts that are likely to cause serious injuries; content that encourages people to use harmful substances or substances in harmful quantities; content that shames people based on body type or physical features; and "content that promotes or romanticizes depression, hopelessness and despair."

WTF? How is this supposed to work? A system that auto-blocks all NSFW tagged content itself as a blunt instrument is viable - but half the stuff on here, on Reddit here isn't even necessarily tagged as NSFW when its posted. Are extreme mountain biking or skiing or skateboarding or other similar types videos going to be age-gated because they could be content that "promotes challenges or stunts that are likely to cause serious injuries"? How do you verify whether or not content specifically romanticises "hopelessness" or "despair" exactly? Are Giles Corey songs now 18+? What does that even mean? Even the writing of it is Orwellian.

It also adds "depicts real or realistic serious violence against a person, an animal, or a fictional creature" ?????

Are action movie clips now going to be age-gated? Or video game clips? From TV shows and films that are PG-13?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

"Persona promises not to retain the photo for longer than 7 days and will not have access to your Reddit data such as the subreddits you visit,"

Why would they need to have it any longer than the few seconds it takes to verify the age?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 hours ago

They need enough time to share it with other organisations before deleting it.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

But bots have no age, haven’t they?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 hours ago

They're technically almost all underage.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago

Is everyone in the UK a bot?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I am robot.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago

hello mr. robot

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 hours ago (4 children)

I am wondering how feddit.uk will handle this.

[–] Blaze 9 points 6 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

I very much doubt Ofcom knows what Feddit is, let alone Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It'll only be an issue if they host mature content or federate with other instances that do, no?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

The OSA bill in the UK has caused a hamster forum to shut down over concerns of not being able to follow it (or the risks associated with non-compliance). It's an unbelievably wordy and excessive bill that is a bureaucratic nightmare for small communities.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/18/hamster-forum-local-residents-websites-shut-down-new-laws/

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Why would they have to handle it? This is Rddit's choice, not the law. I mean, why would Redit decide it now? Does Feddit fall under the same act? Or is it something new?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Feddit is actually (presumably) hosted in the UK, so if Ofcom actually knew what the Fediverse is they could start trying to demand they do age verification.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

We're hosted in Germany, but that doesn't actually matter as the admins are physically in the UK so Ofcom fines are actually a worry. I need to do another review (yay), but I'm pretty sure we don't have to do any age verification. We do have to assume all our users are children though, as we can only say we don't if we do 'highly effective age verification'* of our users, and we do host content that is 'likely to appeal to children', but I don't believe we host anything that would need to be gatekept from children. We actively block NSFW content and as far as I'm aware there isn't a suicide encouragement or terrorist recruitment community on Lemmy. There are maybe some things that I may need to be changed/patch in Lemmy (e.g. letting users lock their own posts), or making some safety tools (one I want to work on is doing perceptual hashing of images embedded in markdown as current tools only work on post links), but I don't think complying is necessary an issue for us. I'm not a lawyer though and that's just my understanding, we could be fucked.

* This entire 'force every website to keep a separate database of users adult status' is so stupid and I swear it only works like this because of lobbying from companies like Yoti. PornHub is right that it should be device based, but these laws are only using children as a crutch. It's implemented like this because certain parts of the British establishment find porn icky and are hoping by making it more invasive to access that you'll stop watching it. Of course, all this is going to do is push people to sites that don't follow the law so host more extreme content.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

They’ll get round to Lemmy eventually.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

I doubt it. This is Ofcom you're talking about. "What's a Lemmy"? (Said in the voice of Sandor Clegane)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

That’s the beauty of federation. Host your own instance. You can prove your age by looking in a mirror.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

And any instances hosted in the UK or accessible from the UK are subject to this law.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Yes but all that means is you have to have content restrictions for under 18 users of your instance. Set your instance as private and only logged in users see anything. Done

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Verification is part of the law

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 hours ago

So verify your own ID by looking at it or as I said earlier just look in the mirror and

The legislation specifically states:

The verification process may be of any kind (and in particular, it need not require documentation to be provided)

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpa/2023/50/part/4/chapter/1

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

The laws are only as powerful as their enforcement. Censoring instances would be like playing a game of whack-a-mole.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

Nah lol. Old reddit UI and a VPN should work fine, for now at least.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 hours ago

A redlib instance is also an option. Example: https://redlib.pussthecat.org/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I was told once that if you use a VPN Reddit Will Shadow ban you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 hours ago

That's my secret: I don't log into reddit anymore or engage with any of the posts there

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

They do. Not all of them likely, but the most popular ones for sure.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

eventually, the highly used ones will get you shadowbanned, but once you turn it off, your account might be immediately shadowbanned.